The process of designing, developing and manufacturing a new product and the process of changing or adapting an existing product presents many challenges to product managers and engineers to bring the product to market for the least cost and within schedule while maintaining or even increasing product quality. Many companies are realizing that the conventional product design process is not satisfactory to meet these needs. They require early involvement of manufacturing engineering, cost engineering, logistic planning, procurement, manufacturing, service and support with the design effort. Furthermore, they require planning and control of product data through design, release and manufacturing.
Project Management, as a modern management tool, has its origins in the early part of this century when Henry Gantt developed his visual aid for work control. The so-called Gantt-chart is a graphic representation of a project schedule that shows each task as a bar having a length proportional to the duration of the task.
The British patent specification 1 397 088, "Process for converting activity on the arrow type network to an activity on the node", application no. 54905/72, filed Nov. 28, 1972, describes a digital computer process for changing the external representation of an activity on the arrow type network to an internal representation of an activity on the node type precedence network in order to allow a computerized project management system that is capable of processing an activity on the node type precedence network to also process an activity on the arrow type network, an example of the former being disclosed in British patent specification 1 375 917 with application no. 54131/72.
In G. P. Fitzpatrick, T. R. Haynes and W. R. Sterrett: "Transportation-Metaphor Workflow Status Display", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 35, No. 3, August 1992, pages 4 to 10, is described that the change from paper batch processing to on-line workflow processing makes it very difficult to understand the status of work-in-process. Forms processing tools allow for transaction paths to be defined and one of several people to request a transaction from a common queue to process the next available transaction.
In D. J. Spoon: "Project Management Environment", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. a, February 1990, pages 250 to 254, a process management environment is described including an operating environment, data elements, and application functions and processes.
In R. T. Marshak: "IBM's FlowMark, Object-Oriented Workflow for Mission-Critical Applications", Workgroup Computing Report (USA), Vol. 17, No. 5, 1994, page 3 to 13, the object character of IBM FlowMark as a client/server product built on a true object model that is targeted for mission-critical production process application development and deployment is described.
In H. A. Inniss and J. H. Sheridan: "Workflow Management Based on an Object-Oriented Paradigm", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 3, March 1994, page 185, other aspects of object-oriented modelling on customization and changes are described.
In F. Leymann and D. Roller: "Business Process Management with FlowMark", Digest of papers, Cat. No. 94CH3414-0, Spring COMPCON 94, 1994, pages 230 to 234, the state-of-the-art computer process management tool IBM FlowMark is described. The meta model of IBM FlowMark is presented as well as the implementation of IBM FlowMark. The possibilities of IBM FlowMark for modelling of business processes as well as their execution are discussed. The product IBM FlowMark is available for different computer platforms and documentation for IBM FlowMark is available in every IBM branch. Flowmark is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation.
In the European Patent Application "Automated interface to project management tool", Publication number: 0 314 596, date of publication of application: May 3, 1989, a method for the automatic interfacing of a conceptual design tool provides for the early manufacturing involvement information needed to aid and improve the total design and manufacturing effort to produce a final product. The conceptual design tool is used to build and modify a product structure. Using the conceptual design tool, a user inputs manufacturing details by item in the product structure.
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,303,170, "System and method for process modelling and project planning", date of patent: Apr. 12, 1994, filed Apr. 3, 1992, describes a method for enabling the flexible handling of time, iteration and resource type as variables; e. g. project/process simulation tool defines an activity, defines alternative resources required to commence the activity, determine availability of the alternative resources, and varies a duration of the activity based on the availability of the alternative resources. According to another aspect, a modelling process is a computer, provided for including: supplying a modelling program having a plurality of predefined stages of execution which collectively define a transfer function of an activity within a network, defining a plurality of user supplied programming statements, each provided with a label indicative of at least one of the stages of execution, and causing the modelling program to execute the user supplied programming statements, each immediately followed by a stage of execution indicated by the associated label.
The term "process" in the present invention is used in close similarity to the processes as definable with the IBM FlowMark product. That means that a process can be represented as a network of activities in a directed graph where the sequencing of activities is modelled by directed control connectors, control splits, and joins.
The concept of "project" in general is concerned with placing activities on a time line, often defined by a calendar. Each activity is planned to have a time duration and has to be executed by a resource, e. g. a person or a member of a team of persons. Project management is concerned with the achievement of target dates while using available resources, staying within the sequencing constraints of activities. Thus, project management without cooperating with a process manager employs normally implied knowledge about the rules of sequencing activities. As an example, when planning and controlling the building of a house, it is known in which sequence various activities have to be executed, e. g. the basement comes before the roof.